


Grounded

by GlassOrca



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Cyberpunk, Love/Hate, Magic, Multi, Slow Burn, original - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:01:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23153686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlassOrca/pseuds/GlassOrca
Summary: The gamble of a lifetime gone wrong. A hound dog loose from hell. A man with cyber-magic in his veins on the run. He'll be wiped if he's caught... but how does a M4G3 run from something that always knows where you are?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is original, but the genre isn't. Sorry in advance to people who work in IT. I had some fun writing it though.
> 
> Hope you enjoy.

-

“You’re sure this is gonna work, right?”

Silence. The hot breath of cooling fans. Thick ribbons of black wire hung like vines, snaking up square aluminum walls and pooling on the floor in pulsing coils of green light.

It’s going to work.

It has to.

A gruff sigh.

“... Well, we’re fucked if it doesn’t.”

Two figures crouched side by side in a dark, vacant vent. One might think, looking at them from afar, that this pair consisted of an adult and a child.

However, the smaller figure was not the size of a child - in fact, rather the opposite. He was a grown, albeit rather slim, man.

His partner was simply gargantuan.

The giant’s broad shoulders brushed the ceiling of the 5’ by 5’ vent, even as he craned his great head. He awkwardly reached into a tool belt at his hip, a challenging task with so little room to move, and procured a silver hexagonal cylinder. It looked like a small tube of lipstick in his huge hands.

Clumsily, he twisted the end off with thick fingers to reveal what looked like a tuning fork. The other figure watched on as he gestured widely to the square panel in front of them. The words “CENTRAL POWER” revealed themselves under the faint green lights, painted on with flaking yellow enamel.

“This should be the one.”

The giant pushed the back end of the cylinder with a wide, flat thumb, and the tuning fork flickered and screamed to life with the crackle of a furious beehive. A spark arced brightly between the tines. He pinched the little thing with his fingers, and with purpose, he began to delicately trace the wall as though he were writing with chalk.

Electricity jumped from the fork in a jagged, twitching line. The dusty aluminum where he held the tool began to oxidize black and smoke, then hiss, and within seconds the metal began to melt. While the two men quietly held their breath, soon, a glowing red square appeared from the darkness before them like an ominous rune.

As the giant finished his work, he turned to his partner, pressing the instrument’s button again and letting the screech of the welding fork die.

“We’ll have seven minutes to get out once you fry it. It’s all you from here, blondie.”

The other man cut the hulking figure a look, his limp yellow hair a sickly green hue in the faint glow. Whatever humor he could've had was soured by the tenseness in his shoulder blades.

_Ignore him. Just get it done. Quickly._

_And don't fuck up._

He turned his gaze apprehensively to his target, realizing that this chunk of metal would probably end up leading to his death. Suddenly, a nervous huff of air burst from him. It had sat unwelcome, swelling in his lungs, without him even realizing it was there.

Tense, he reached his hands up to the panel with quivering flat palms, carefully sliding the panel off and leaning it to the side with all the quietness and control he could muster. 

Beneath was a still wash of calm red lights, perfectly gridded like bright rubies on display.

Both men were stiff as corpses as he observed the elaborate circuitry before him. The thermal fans continued to wash over the both of them with hot, stifling air.

“Fuck.”

The giant’s nervous stare snapped to his partner’s taut face. “What?”

Hesitantly, the blonde man glanced back. He blinked away to stare at the dots of red again. His voice cracked as he spoke.

“... It’s fine. It's just…” He swallowed, his mouth dry.

“They have a Y5400 alarm.”

The giant’s face drained with shock.

“They _what_?!”

He swung his head to stare, bewildered, at the mocking stillness in the wall. His calloused hands curled into fists, the veins in his arms pulsing as his eyes widened in panic.

“Fuck!!! Nobody but the Manafeds uses that shit anymore!!!"

He quietly hissed and spat at the air in frustration in fuming belligerence.

"Those fuckers said it was on the new _Jericho_ software! Not this ancient cyber-physical bullshit!!!”

“They wouldn’t have listed this anywhere, probably to protect the infrastructure,” the blonde cut in. His expression was distant, annoyance quickly resettling back into his icy tone.

“It’s not... unheard of.” He scrubbed his face with exasperation, and pinched the bridge of his nose. There was no way intel could’ve seen this from just looking online. He’d been hoping for better, but…

This didn’t change anything. He still had to try.

Steeling himself, he looked at the panel with an unwavering focus.

“I can do it.”

A thick hand snatched the collar of his ratty jacket.

“No, you fucking can’t, and you won’t. That thing goes off, we both die.” With a growing resoluteness on his face, the giant’s lips thinned. “It’s over. We’re done.”

The blonde man’s empty black eyes stared down at the giant’s iron grip with a hostile impatience.

“We walk out of here, we might as well be dead anyway." The giant glared back. He was right. It was a miracle they got in... walking out empty-handed was completely stupid.

The blonde squirmed uncomfortably as the giant bargained with himself, grip loosening with hesitance.

"Just... let me do my job.” He stiffly shoved the huge arm away, although it took some effort. He turned away, refusing to meet the giant's face. They both knew this was a bad idea, but it was the only idea they had.

Hoping the tremor in them wasn’t visible, he held out his sharp hands towards the grid. Tersely, the giant watched on, muttering every manner of expletive he could think of to the stagnant air.

Shaking his head and calling his mind to attention, the blonde man gazed forward, staring yet unseeing as his hands floated closer together. His thumbs and forefingers finally met to make a triangle of space outstretched in front of him, and his shoulders gently relaxed as though he were in a trance.

His dark eyes hazily unfocused, yet remained glaring steadily through his fingers. The red lights waited patiently before him.

The giant’s unease was dampened by a sharp curiosity as he watched the blonde work. He’d seen all manner of clever engineer and shitty hacker in his long history with the business of technocrime, but he’d never witnessed a M4G3’s handiwork. It was unlikely he ever would’ve in an entire lifetime - far as he knew, they’d all died off in the War or been sucked dry by the sweethearts in some dim lab out in the far open.

Suddenly, a spray of fireworks shot out from the wall.

The giant’s head jerked to the fried circuit in panic, only to stare, flabbergasted. What had formerly been a tiny red light among many was now a dim, flickering green. The guy hadn’t even touched it… He looked to the blonde’s face, but he was much too far into his practice to offer any explanation.

Tempting a glance through the triangular window of his hands, the giant saw nothing but the blinking circuit board in front of them, though the M4G3’s brows were furrowed with deep contemplation.

Puzzled and defeated, he sighed, and felt rather alone for a moment in this hot, cramped room. This could take a while, and waiting made him nervous. There were still a lot of red lights to go…

A second shower of sparks fizzled out and lit the room, this time more intense than the last. The smell of burnt copper filled the space, and the sheet of circuitry suddenly began to blink more intensely. Soon, the entire upper corner of red lights was turning an obedient, incredible green.

Unsettled, the giant growled, “Shit! Are you almost done?”

The M4G3 either ignored him or didn’t hear. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead into his brow.

However, as though in response to his prodding, the red lights began to convert much more steadily now, the succession pooling out from the upper corner at a rate twice as fast as before. Every single instance of red was flickering to green, as though the circuit board had developed a mind of its own.

In less than one minute, there was only one red light left. Both men were exhausted now, the stuffed air feeling more and more like the vice of a bear trap's teeth with every extra second that ticked by.

The muscles in the M4G3’s jaw clenched. The giant watched that last little red light, his mind heady with crushing fear and apprehension.

Finally, the M4G3’s eyes closed.

The final light turned green.

Then the alarm went off.

-


	2. Chapter 2

-

Numbness.

The open-mouthed void swam like an oily worm past the M4G3’s bony ankles.

The vast spread of nothing and everything seethed beneath him, reflected under his bare feet in a maze of code.

Using the cyber-magic only a M4G3 can wield, he’d seen places just like this, countless times.

The warmth of his organic thought was sapped away by the sweet crackle of simple-minded logic strings, curiously prodding his consciousness with their short exploratory algorithms.

If he wasn’t careful, he could lose himself here.

Before him remained his outstretched triangular hands, the skin of his fingers now a halogenic blue. The light his body emitted cut through the black fog, a tiny speck of life in an unbuilt lair of things that were fundamentally never alive.

To a M4G3, digital systems were just like another dirty city, really.

All of the programs went about their business with detached fervor, passing swiftly by one another with no notice of anything but their mission.

The key startup programs all marched with measured perfection to their cubicles like trained employees, one by one.

The upkeep services stayed squatting in their metaphorical flats, milling about in an endlessly looping patrol to pick up fragments of garbage that the CPU’s imperfect web left behind.

The spiral of programming underneath him was endless, branching out deeper and deeper into microsects and error-ridden chasms. This place was… completely and utterly unknowable to someone looking for a tiny little bug to exploit.

However, a M4G3 mainly deals in the things that live in skyscrapers.

The man stretched his mind like a limb and pushed his unfamiliar, organic will out to the hive of roiling software stretching before him. Sifting past the darting minnows of unimportant inquiries, he reached for the giant spine of the mainframe buried deep beneath.

Once the fingers of his brain found it, they clawed deep, holding firmly like a vice. With a purposeful jerk, he tugged. The command startled the beast. Confused, it writhed like a poisoned snake underneath his crushing desire.

The mainframe fought wildly in his grasp for what felt like several tense minutes, brittle sprays of interrupted processes spitting out of the dead ocean as it thrashed about.

As the seconds ticked by, the M4G3’s ferocity grew weary. He could feel his form splitting as his mind ached and begged to return to the comfort of the body crouching back in the reality of a hot, quiet vent.

With a final burst of effort, he pressed with a quite human wrath and intensity, exerting a might he had been saving for this one last push. His furious eyes pierced the darkness with a blinding starlight.

_ Enough. _

Suddenly, the invisible line he grasped snapped taut. Something began to float steadily from deep below the abyss, like a dead, bloated fish.

Feebly, a mist of blood red spray began to rise from the sheen of the black, upside-down city. It hesitantly edged towards the man’s glowing hands, anchored by the triangular window he held resolutely.

It nudged and trembled hideously, then finally gathered into a morphing, bulbous presence. It shifted unnervingly like a murmuration of starlings.

The M4G3’s lips cracked triumphantly into a pale smile.

“Let’s talk.”

It obediently acquiesced. With some effort, the mist plied itself into the form of something familiar and comprehensible.

Within the slow nanoseconds, there before the M4G3 was a massive creature that wasn’t really a creature at all.

The great fly, aglow with a caustic red light, stared at its unfamiliar captor with thousands of glittering hexagons. Its swollen body hung in the air like a leaking blimp, and its whiskery mandibles fidgeted with an audible hiss of static as it spoke.

_VERIFYING ACCESS. . .

_VERIFICATION FAILED

_USER NOT RECOGNIZED

_ACCESS DENIED

The M4G3’s mouth twitched into a smirk. This was going to be easy, now that the fight was over. The system was talking; that was all he needed.

“Give me what I want, and I’ll be gone. It won’t take long.”

The fly did not react to the M4G3 at first. It simply loomed over him.

Then, its compound eyes pulsed with a wave of processing power. Its furtive mandibles moved once again.

_GUEST AUTHORIZATION PERMITTED

_ISSUE COMMAND?

Y/N:|

A flutter of excitement passed through the M4G3’s incorporeal heart. Time for the next step.

He stretched his neck with a predatory laziness and leveled his gaze with the great fly’s, furrowing his brows.

“Yes. Make me an admin. And don’t tell them I’m here.”

Another wave of red light speckled through the huge, lifeless eyes.

_COMMAND: ADD USER “://_?error” TO ADMINISTRATIVE ACCOUNT

_ADMINISTRATIVE ACCOUNT LOCKED

_ACCESS DENIED

_LOADING PROTOCOL “EMERGENCY_ACCESS_OVERRIDE”. . .

_PROTOCOL “EMERGENCY_ACCESS_OVERRIDE” SUCCESSFULLY LOADED

_NOTIFYING CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION. . .

_//ACTION BLOCKED//

_NOTIFICATION FAILED TO SEND

_USER SUCCESSFULLY ADDED

_WELCOME “://_?error”

_ISSUE ADMINISTRATIVE COMMAND?

Y/N:|

Giddy with overbearing pride, the M4G3 shifted his stance, careful not to break the triangle of his hands.

“Yes! Fuck, yes. Perfect.”

Now… it was time for the final step.

With the sudden realization of what would come next, his mind danced near deliriousness.

This was only the first one.

But if this worked… it was the start of something bigger than he'd ever dreamed of.

His shoulders rose with an electrifying breath. His lungs felt like ice.

Sure, people would definitely die. Entire cities might even collapse, too.

The world would be sick, for a while.

But then… it would get better. So, so much better.

The mainframe waited impassively before him. Realigning his attention, he snarled his final command.

“Now... I want you to  kill  the  _ entire  _ mainframe. Send a diagnostic boost to all the connected hubs. But this time, pump it up to ten-thousand-- No,  _ twenty _ -thousand percent base power. If they’re offline, boot ‘em up.”

His eyes were feverish.

“I want everything to  _ burn _ .”

The fly’s expression flickered, then went dark, its eyes flat and dull. Nervously, the M4G3’s mind buzzed.

This was as real as the air his body breathed.

All of it, laid out before him, like a throne made of C4.

He had finally lit the match.

The compound eyes began their bright track again, the light of computational thought rippling across the creature’s wide face.

They remained active for several seconds, flickering more and more rapidly as countless integrated safety protocols were overridden.

His pulse racing, the M4G3 registered distant surprise in himself. This seemed too easy.

Quashing his unease, he chided himself. It didn’t matter. This didn't have to be complicated; it was complicated enough getting to this point. If anything, it was good that this was happening fast.

The fly’s eyes stopped flashing and beamed a solid red.

Suddenly, the M4G3 realized his dire mistake.

With a growing seed of horror in his stomach, he drew his eyes down to the millimeter of space slicing between both of his hands… 

The fly seethed.

_HELLO, ATLAS

_YOU DIDN’T THINK IT WOULD BE THAT EASY, DID YOU?|

The M4G3 felt nothing. He couldn’t.

_ They know _ .

And now he was going to die.

As his mind was vacuumed out from the void back into reality, the fly’s body vaporized and screamed. The alarm system activated instantly, and shards of relentless security programs cut through his digital form from all directions.

As he was ripped to agonizing shreds, the final image Atlas saw of his last, failed hope was the roaring cyclone of a trillion tracking signals. All of them were imprinted with one single directive.

_FIND THE M4G3.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope it's not facetious to mention, but if it's not immediately clear, M4G3 is just the word mage but scifi. stay tuned next time for lizard drugs.
> 
> seeya soon...


End file.
